Shiloh and Other Stories (5 page)

Later, after they drop off Clausie and are driving home, Judy turns on the car radio. Mary Lou is still chuckling over the movie, but Judy seems depressed. She has hardly mentioned her roommate, so Mary Lou asks, “Where’d Stephanie go then, if she didn’t go home?”

Judy turns the radio down. “She went to her sister’s, in Nashville. Her brother-in-law’s a record promoter and they’ve got this big place with a swimming pool and horses and stuff.”

“Well, maybe she can make up with her boyfriend when she cools off.”

“I don’t think so.” Judy turns right at the high school and heads down the highway. She says, “She wants to break up with him, but he won’t leave her alone, so she just took off.”

Mary Lou sighs. “This day and time, people just do what they please. They just hit the road. Like those guys in the show. And like Ed.”

“Stephanie’s afraid of Jeff, though, afraid of what he might do.”

“What?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just something crazy.” Judy turns up the volume of the radio, saying, “Here’s a song for you, Mom. It’s a dirty song. ‘The Horizontal Bop’—get it?”

Mary Lou listens for a moment. “I don’t get it,” she says, fearing something as abstruse as the photons. In the song, the singer says repeatedly, “Everybody wants to do the Horizontal Bop.”

“Oh, I get it,” Mary Lou says with a sudden laugh. “I don’t dare tell my Rookers about that.” A moment later, she says, “But they wouldn’t get it. It’s the word ‘bop.’ They probably never heard the word ‘bop.’ ”

Mary Lou feels a little pleased with herself. Bop. Bebop. She’s not so old. Her daughter is not so far away. For a brief moment, Mary Lou feels that rush of joy that children experience when they whirl around happily, unconscious of time.

—

When Mary Lou’s friends come to play Rook the following evening, they are curious about Judy’s roommate, but Judy won’t divulge much. She is curled on the love seat, studying math. Mary Lou explains to the Rookers, “Stephanie comes from a kind of disturbed family. Her mother’s had a bunch of nervous breakdowns and her daddy’s a vegetarian.” Mack has the TV too loud, and it almost seems that the Incredible Hulk is in on the card game. Mary Lou gets Mack to turn down the sound. Later, he turns the TV off and picks up Judy’s physics book. As the game goes on, he periodically goes to the telephone and dials the time-and-temperature number. The temperature is dropping,
he reports. It is already down to twenty-four. He is hoping for snow, but the Rookers worry about the weather, fearful of driving back in the freezing night air.

When Clausie tells about
Stir Crazy
, Mary Lou tries to describe the scene that cracked her up—Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder dressed up in elaborate feathered costumes. They were supposed to be woodpeckers.

Clausie says, “I liked to died when the jailer woke ’em up in the morning, and they was both of ’em trying to use the commode at the same time.”

The Rookers keep getting mixed up, missing plays. Thelma plays the wrong color.

“What did you do that for?” asks Edda, her partner tonight. “Trumps is green.”

Thelma says, “I’m so bumfuzzled I can’t think. I don’t know when I’ve ever listened to such foolishness. Peckerwoods and niggers and a dirty show.”

Mary Lou has been thinking of commenting on a new disease she has heard of, in which a person is afflicted by uncontrollable twitching and compulsive swearing, but she realizes that’s a bad idea. She jumps up, saying, “Let’s stop for refreshments, y’all. I made coconut cake with seven-minute icing.”

Mary Lou serves the cake on her good plates, and everyone comments on how moist it is. After finishing her cake and iced tea, Thelma suddenly insists on leaving because of the weather. She says her feet are cold. Mary Lou offers to turn up the heat, but Thelma already has her coat on. She whips out her flashlight and heads for the door. Thelma’s Buick sounds like a cement mixer. As they hear it backing out of the driveway, Clausie says, in a confidential tone, “She’s mad because we saw that dirty show. The weather, my eye.”

“She’s real religious,” says Edda.

“Well, golly-Bill, I’m as Christian as the next one!” cries Mary Lou. “Them words don’t mean anything against religion. I bet Mack just got her stirred up about the temperature.”

“Thelma’s real old-timey,” says Clausie. “She don’t have any idea some of the things kids do nowadays.”

“Times has changed, that’s for sure,” says Mary Lou.

Edda says, “Otis spoiled her. He carried her around on a pillow.”

Mary Lou takes Mack some cake on a paper plate. He is still reading the physics book.

“We went set,” Mary Lou says. “I had the Rook last hand, but it didn’t do me any good.”

“Thelma fixed your little red wagon, didn’t she?” Mack says with a satisfied grin.

“It was your fault, getting her all worked up about the cold. Why don’t you play with us—and take Thelma’s place?”

“I’m busy studying. I think I’ve found a mistake in this book.” He takes a large bite of cake. “Your coconut is my favorite,” he says.

“I’ll give you my recipe,” Mary Lou snaps, wheeling away.

To Mary Lou’s surprise, Judy offers to take Thelma’s place and finish the card game. Mary Lou apologizes to her daughter for taking her away from her books, but Judy says she needs a break. Judy wins several hands, trumping with a flourish and grabbing the cards gleefully. Mary Lou is relieved. After Clausie and Edda leave, she feels excited and talkative. She finds herself telling Judy more about Ed, trying to make Judy remember her uncle. Mary Lou finds a box of photographs and shows Judy a picture of him. In the snapshot, he is standing in front of his tractor-trailer truck, holding a can of Hudepohl.

Mary Lou says, “He used to drive these long hauls, and when he’d come back through here, the police would try and pick him up. They heard he had money.”

Mack joins Judy on the love seat. He shuffles silently through the pictures, and Mary Lou talks rapidly. “They’d follow him around, just waiting for him to cross that line, to start something. One time he and his first wife, Pauline, went to the show and when they got out they stuck him with a parking ticket. All because he had a record.”

Judy and Mack are looking at the pictures together. Mack is studying a picture of himself with Judy, a bald-headed baby clutching a rattle.

“How did he get a record?” asks Judy.

“Wrecks.”

“D.W.I.?” asks Judy knowingly. “Driving while intoxicated?”

Mary Lou nods. “Wrecks. A man got killed in one.”

“Did they charge him?” Judy asks with sudden eagerness.

“No. It wasn’t his fault,” Mary Lou says quickly.

“You take after Ed,” Mack tells Judy. “You kind of favor him around the eyes.”

“He said he was a beanpole,” says Mary Lou. “He said he had to bend over to make a shadow. He never had a ounce of fat on his bones.”

Judy looks closely at her uncle’s picture again, as though trying to memorize it for an exam.

“Wow,” she says. “Far out.”

Mack, shuffling some of the snapshots into a ragged stack, says to Judy in a plaintive tone, “Your mother wants to leave us and go out to California.”

“I never said that,” says Mary Lou. “When did I say that?”

Judy is not listening. She is in the kitchen, searching the refrigerator. “Don’t we have any Cokes?” she asks.

“No. We drunk the last one at supper,” says Mary Lou, confused.

Judy puts on her jacket. “I’ll run out and get some.”

“It’s freezing out there,” says Mack anxiously. “They’re high at the Convenient,” Mary Lou calls as Judy goes out the door. “But I guess that’s the only place open this late.”

Mary Lou sees Mack looking at her as though he is blaming her for Judy’s leaving. “What are you looking at me in that tone of voice for?” she demands. “You’re always making fun of me. I feel like an old stringling cat.”

“Why, I didn’t mean to,” says Mack, pretending innocence.

“She’s gone. Furthermore, she’s
grown
and she can go out in the middle of the night if she wants to. She can go to South
America
if she wants to.”

Mary Lou puts the cover on the cake stand and runs water in the sink over the cake plates. Before she can say more, Mack has
lifted the telephone and is dialing the time-and-temperature number again. He listens, while his mouth drops open, as if in disbelief.

“The temperature’s going down a degree every hour,” he says in a whisper. “It’s down to twenty-one.”

Mary Lou suddenly realizes that Mack calls the temperature number because he is afraid to talk on the telephone, and by listening to a recording, he doesn’t have to reply. It’s his way of pretending that he’s involved. He wants it to snow so he won’t have to go outside. He is afraid of what might happen. But it occurs to her that what he must really be afraid of is women. Then Mary Lou feels so sick and heavy with her power over him that she wants to cry. She sees the way her husband is standing there, in a frozen pose. Mack looks as though he could stand there all night with the telephone receiver against his ear.

When I was nine, my mother took me on a long journey up North, because she wanted me to have a chance to see the tall buildings of Detroit. We lived on a farm in western Kentucky, not far from the U.S. highway that took so many Southerners northward to work in the auto industry just after World War II. We went to visit Aunt Mozelle, Mama’s sister, and Uncle Boone Cashon, who had headed north soon after Boone’s discharge from the service. They lived in a suburb of Detroit, and my mother had visited them once before. She couldn’t get the skyscrapers she had seen out of her mind.

The Brooks bus took all day and all night to get there. On our trip, my mother threw up and a black baby cried all the way. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about Detroit. Mama had tried in vain to show me how high the buildings were, pointing at the straight horizon beyond the cornfields. I had the impression that they towered halfway to the moon.

“Don’t let the Polacks get you,” my father had warned when we left. He had to stay home to milk the cows. My two-year-old brother, Johnny, stayed behind with him.

My aunt and uncle met us in a taxi at the bus station, and before
I got a good look at them, they had engulfed me in their arms.

“I wouldn’t have knowed you, Peggy Jo,” my uncle said. “You was just a little squirt the last time I saw you.”

“Don’t this beat all?” said Aunt Mozelle. “Boone here could have built us a car by now—and us coming in a taxi.”

“We’ve still got that old plug, but it gets us to town,” said Mama.

“How could I build a car?” said Uncle Boone. “All I know is bumpers.”

“That’s what he does,” my aunt said to me. “He puts on bumpers.”

“We’ll get a car someday soon,” Uncle Boone said to his wife.

My uncle was a thin, delicate man with a receding hairline. His speckled skin made me think of the fragile shells of sparrow eggs. My aunt, on the other hand, was stout and tanned, with thick, dark hair draped like wings over her ears. I gazed at my aunt and uncle, trying to match them with the photograph my mother had shown me.

“Peggy’s all worked up over seeing the tall buildings,” said Mama as we climbed into the taxi. “The cat’s got her tongue.”

“It has
not
!”

“I’m afraid we’ve got bad news,” said Aunt Mozelle. “The city buses is on strike and there’s no way to get into Detroit.”

“Don’t say it!” cried Mama. “After we come all this way.”

“It’s trouble with the unions,” said Boone. “But they might start up before y’all go back.” He patted my knee and said, “Don’t worry, littlun.”

“The unions is full of reds,” Aunt Mozelle whispered to my mother.

“Would it be safe to go?” Mama asked.

“We needn’t worry,” said Aunt Mozelle.

From the window of the squat yellow taxi, driven by a froglike man who grunted, I scrutinized the strange and vast neighborhoods we were passing through. I had never seen so many houses, all laid out in neat rows. The houses were new, and their pastel colors seemed peaceful and alluring. The skyscrapers were still as remote to me as the castles in fairy tales, but
these houses were real, and they were nestled next to each other in a thrilling intimacy. I knew at once where I wanted to live when I grew up—in a place like this, with neighbors.

My relatives’ house, on a treeless new street, had venetian blinds and glossy hardwood floors. The living room carpet had giant pink roses that made me think you could play hopscotch on them. The guest room had knotty-pine paneling and a sweet-smelling cedar closet. Aunt Mozelle had put His and Her towels in our room. They had dogs on them and were pleasurably soft. At home, all of our washrags came out of detergent boxes, and our towels were faded and thin. The house was grand. And I had never seen my mother sparkling so. When she saw the kitchen, she whirled around happily, like a young girl, forgetting her dizziness on the bus. Aunt Mozelle had a toaster, a Mixmaster, an electric stove, and a large electric clock shaped like a rooster. On the wall, copper-bottomed pans gleamed in a row like golden-eyed cats lined up on a fence.

“Ain’t it the berries?” my mother said to me. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“Sometimes I have to pinch myself,” said my aunt.

Just then, the front door slammed and a tall girl with a ponytail bounded into the house, saying “Hey!” in an offhand manner.

“Corn!” I said timidly, which seemed to perplex her, for she stared at me as though I were some odd sort of pet allowed into the house. This was my cousin Betsy Lou, in bluejeans rolled up halfway to her knees.

“Our kinfolks is here,” Aunt Mozelle announced.

“Law, you’ve growed into a beanpole,” said Mama to Betsy Lou.

“Welcome to our fair city, and I hope you don’t get polio,” Betsy Lou said to me.

“Watch what you’re saying!” cried her mother. “You’ll scare Peggy Jo.”

“I imagine it’ll be worse this summer than last,” said Mama, looking worried.

“If we’re stuck here without a car, you won’t be any place to catch polio,” Aunt Mozelle said, smiling at me.

“Polio spreads at swimming pools,” Betsy Lou said.